The new version, which sports a redesigned user interface, also includes a full calendar window with day, week, month, and year views, an intuitive parsing engine, iCloud reminders support, light theme, time zone support, birthday reminders, Action and Share Extensions as well as Handoff support to connect your Mac with your iOS devices.

iCloud Reminders are even better and users can now see their events and dated reminders together in the main list. Reminders can be quickly created by starting sentences with “reminder”, “todo”, “task”, or “remind me to.” Users can also add dates, times, and location-based geofences (when I arrive/when I leave) to their reminders.

And it apparently cost Apple about US$25 million in lost sales revenue.

Over the course of a 12-hour outage between Tuesday and Wednesday, Apple’s iTunes Store and App Store were down due to a DNS error. During this time, users couldn’t purchase apps, songs, movies or books. It took Apple 12 hours to get their systems up and running again, costing the company about US$25 million in lost sales.

On Tuesday, it was reported that Apple services are experiencing major issues.

It started with iCloud. Users were unable to sign in to their iCloud mail accounts, then all of iCloud went down in an outage that lasted from just before 5 a.m. Eastern to around 9 a.m. Now iCloud is back up, but customers can’t make purchases in iTunes, the iOS and Mac App Stores, and the iBooks Store. iTunes Connect is also offline and reporting errors.

You’re that much closer to OS X 10.10.3 and whatever Apple’s doing with its photo applications.

On Monday, Apple released the first public beta of its OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite update. The beta includes an iCloud-based Photos application, new emojis for the system and simpler login to Google accounts for profiles with two-factor authentication enabled.

A recent update of Microsoft’s Office for iOS now includes support for iCloud.

Microsoft’s vaunted word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps now use iCloud as a document storage provider. Documents can be opened, edited, and saved directly to and from the service for users on iOS 8.

Apple has now expanded the number of services protected by its two-step verification service, security-conscious users now able to count iMessage and FaceTime among those features protected by the service.

Beginning today, those who have opted in to the two-step verification program will be asked to provide a one-time security code the next time they configure iMessage or FaceTime on a device.

It’s the previews and betas that let you know about the cool stuff coming down the pipe…

Developers got their mitts on build 14D721, the first preview build of OS X 10.10.3 on Thursday. The new build featured the first sample of Apple’s forthcoming Photos application, which replaces iPhoto for Mac.

Apple offered a preview of Photos under embargo to select publications ahead of Thursday’s beta release. Initial impressions make it clear the application is yet another marriage between iOS and OS X, including icons and a general look and feel borrowed from the native Photos application for iOS 8.

Then there’s the tactic these idiots pulled, which gets you caught posthaste.

Per The Smoking Gun, police have arrested two dopey Texas thieves who stole an iPad and then used the device to take celebratory “selfie” photos that were automatically uploaded to the victim’s iCloud account.